© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com
A billboard company rejected an advertisement submitted by a minister who wants to respond to the recent Massachusetts ruling permitting "gay marriage" by declaring he is a happily married ex-homosexual.
Stephen Bennett, head of a Christian family advocacy group, says his New York director tried to rent a billboard in the state capital, Albany, from the Lamar Advertising Co. of Baton Rouge, La.
Billboard ad rejected by advertising agency |
The billboard was to help kick off a national campaign in response to the November ruling by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, which said homosexual couples are legally entitled to wed under the state constitution and should be allowed to apply for marriage licenses.
The proposed billboard features a black and white photo of Bennett, his wife Irene and their two children.
It reads: "Wonderful Husband. Loving Father. Former Homosexual. Jesus Christ Changes Lives."
Bennett recounted to WND a phone conversation his colleague, Madeline Derwin, had with a Lamar representative in Albany. Derwin said the representative immediately stopped the conversation and put her on hold when she told him the content of the message.
The Albany representative said he would call back but Derwin says she never heard from him. Yesterday, she called him and was told Lamar had decided not to take the billboard because of the subject matter, according to Bennett.
The vice president and general manager of Lamar's Albany office, Matt Duddy, is away this week and had not replied to a message from WND seeking a response.
Bennett said he lived a homosexual lifestyle for 11 years and left it in 1992 after becoming a Christian.
"It never ceases to amaze me how biased and unfair the media really is," he said. "Sharing my story has given thousands of people hope – homosexual men and women who are unhappy with their same-sex attractions."
A recording artist and national speaker, Bennett's Huntington, Conn.-based group, Stephen Bennett Ministries, says it offers help to people who want to "come out" of the homosexual lifestyle.
Bennett also is special issues editor on homosexuality for the American Family Association.
He has produced pro-family billboards for organizations in Massachusetts and around the country.
"I am only one of thousands of men and women who've left our unwanted homosexuality – and have become the real men and women we were created to be," said Bennett. "The reason stories like mine are continually censored is because if homosexual men and women can really change, the 'gay' theory of homosexuality being innate and unchangeable completely crumbles. Their faulty foundation falls apart."
Bennett said other men and woman who say they have left the homosexual lifestyle will be used for the national campaign.
"These billboard companies have no problem taking advertising for such offensive material as liquor ads and controversial plays such as The Vagina Monologues," he said. "Yet a Christian billboard they refuse? This is blatant discrimination and bias at its best."
He said SBM's attorneys will be "looking over their options."
